Many of the sites act as front end shops selling Amazon listings, so the information is derived from the main Amazon listing. If you go to order, it probably will take you to an Amazon ordering system.

Sound familiar. I suspect both use the same sensor, but i can't even get sufficient specs to see if the same.

The guy with the overly positive review, either has a good sample, or is outdated (he even compares it favorably to old VHS camcorders).

It might be possible, that multiple cameras have the same sensor, but the sensor technology did not turn out as expected, or only some do. this might explain the delays we are seeing in releasing cameras.

If your camera can't stack up against at least a Aiptek. Kodak must be happy.

So, the big question, how does the Kodak and JVC, stack up against the best Aipteks and DXG 596 in performance.

Mostly good, the bad complaints mostly refer to things fixed in firmware, some high expectations and other unrelated problems. Some people do not get the high pitched noise, this might be indication that only some units have it, or newer firmware, or that there hearing is not so good in high frequencies.

There is a guy there that talks about having firmware that fixes the Zoom exposure problems, and multiple tips for the camera, worth reading.

Not much there, some negativity. I think the ccinfo review mentioned that it had more noise in brightly lit scenes then low light, but i wonder if they have sub-par example.

This sub-par example issues, can really sink a product. In my country, we don't have so many Ameircan "you can return anything for any reason and get your money back: options, unless it is faulty most of the time I will have trouble even exchanging it. These sub-par examples should be kept to less than one in a hundred, even on in a thousand, so it can be easily exchanged.

Many of the sites act as front end shops selling Amazon listings, so the information is derived from the main Amazon listing. If you go to order, it probably will take you to an Amazon ordering system.

I would, like to see an official review myself.

I know, which is why I reserve judgment until we get a sufficient number of consumer reviews to form a statistically meaningful view of the product. Unfortunately 'official' reviews are hard to come by on products like this.

Not much there, some negativity. I think the ccinfo review mentioned that it had more noise in brightly lit scenes then low light, but i wonder if they have sub-par example.

This sub-par example issues, can really sink a product. In my country, we don't have so many Ameircan "you can return anything for any reason and get your money back: options, unless it is faulty most of the time I will have trouble even exchanging it. These sub-par examples should be kept to less than one in a hundred, even on in a thousand, so it can be easily exchanged.

I saw one of these JVC in Walmart locally. I find that peoples view of how 'cheap' a device feels seems to be very subjective and I really don't know what they are expecting? It felt no worse than any other device of it's type. I didn't get to play with it as it had no charge but then again it would've been pointless anyway since the view, as we know, on the screen is no indicator of quality.

I have found ccinfo well known to be overly harsh on these types of devices. They do seem to be getting better though as in the past they really did seem to trash anything that wasn't prosumer or that in their opinion was a toy. I guess they are now realizing these 'toys' are here to stay and are actually not as bad as they tried to make out. Just look at the older reviews of the Sanyo Products such as the HD1. I have seen some stunning video from this camera but they really trashed it which soured my opinion of them until recently.

I agree that here in the USA we are spoiled with being able to return products although it does depend on retailer. Some will charge a 15% restocking fee. While I have made use of this myself in the past I do like to limit it by thorough researching. Sometimes though there may be no avoiding it (as in the case of my HDV178) where there were virtually no reviews for a long while.

I might be responsible for that. I was one of the ones on their site that got them to upgrade their reviews. A number of the more professional people joined me on one of their original camera of the year specials, to complain about it. I was glad when that was gone, but then they got overly picky, overboard and still didn't so the reviews sufficiently. Now things are settling down, but I wish they would get rind of that silly scoring system, I don't have time to sit down and learn it. I haven't been able to raise Robyn on email for years (same with tom over toms hardware, though I never did have much to do over there), but it was worth it, we managed to get good reviews that got the video camera industry to reverse the downwards latitude and low light performance trend towards ever smaller chips. Now even Sony primary features low light in their television advertisements, where it should be. Previously cameras were starting to make the low light footage of your loved ones face looking like it is being shot through a fish tank somebody has spewed up beer into, really unattractive. The only reason to be around in these forums saying cameras should be as good as the Sanyo HD2000, and Kodak zi8, and posting for manufacturers to read, is so they don't look as bad as my HSHD, or the HD1.

I must say, the original Sanyo HD1 did have significant issues, and deserved comment, but for the price you could film something that looked as good as your HDTV picture (because HDTV was sooo pooor) but some reviewers went a bit far I think. Now the target is blu ray quality, and these hybrids scrape in, and SHD and Blu ray 3D are coming, that will require even more bandwidth to scrape in. Professional quality for SHD and 3D is going to be over 100-200mb/s (unless somebody like Gramme over at Red Camera can pull off a compression hat trick, eagerly waiting to see how simular his new system is going to be to mine).